As a contract killer, Werner Pinzner was one of the most unscrupulous men in the Hamburg neighborhood in the 80s. A deadly drama ensues during an interrogation:he shoots a public prosecutor, his wife and himself.
by Jochen Lambernd, Hanna Grimm, NDR.de, Oliver Diedrich, NDR.de
A police squad arrested Werner "Mucki" Pinzner on April 15, 1986 in Hamburg. The killer is charged with five murders. During his last interrogation on July 29, investigators want to know if there are more. What happens then, Pinzner will go down in criminal history.
The bloody deed in the Presidium
July 29, 1986, a Tuesday, is a hot summer day. Werner Pinzner is sitting next to his wife Jutta in room 418 of the police headquarters at the Berliner Tor. Drinks and rolls for the contract killer are on a desk.
Pinzner has announced that he will confess to further crimes. Also in the office are Pinzner's attorney, public prosecutor Wolfgang Bistry, two police officers and a secretary.
When the interrogation is about to begin, Pinzner surprises him with the words "Gentlemen, this is a hostage situation!" - and suddenly draws a revolver.
The headshot seriously injures the prosecutor. Wolfgang Bistry sinks to the floor of the interrogation room.
The two police officers manage to escape. As they rush out of the room, Werner Pinzner shoots after them.
While the typist stays in the room, the escaped police officers sound the alarm. Ambulances race to the headquarters. A helicopter is required.
The rescue workers rush to the front of the building, while Werner Pinzner is on the phone with his daughter on the fourth floor. He says goodbye to her:"Birgit, I love you." When he has hung up, he gives his watch to his lawyer - as an heirloom for his daughter. Then Pinzner turns to his wife Jutta, as the then secretary Gitta Berger remembers.
Pinzner and his wife died instantly. Prosecutor Bistry was flown to Eppendorf University Hospital.
On the evening of July 29, 1986, the daily topics report on the shots fired on the 4th floor of the Hamburg police headquarters. At this point, the prosecutor is still alive.
But Wolfgang Bistry's head injury is too severe - the 40-year-old dies the next day.
The perpetrator
Who is the man doing this "exitus triumphalis"?
Werner Pinzner was born on April 27, 1947, the son of a radio mechanic and a saleswoman in Hamburg-Bramfeld. He drops out of school. He works as a driver, seaman, scaffolder, tiler and butcher. Pinzner marries, fathers a daughter and divorces again. Later he marries again, his Jutta.
In August 1975 he and two accomplices robbed a supermarket. The manager of the market is shot. Pinzner has to go to prison for ten years. There he starts using heroin and cocaine. He dreams of a career in the red light district. In the neighborhood, pimp groups rule over hundreds of prostitutes. The men make money and flaunt status symbols.
A bon vivant - that's what Werner Pinzner wants to be. After his long prison sentence, he finally wants to get involved in the neighborhood.
In the early 1980s he met his future accomplice Armin H. (on the right) and his future client, the Austrian Peter N. The latter is one of those who set the tone in the neighborhood. But:The red light district is in transition. Fewer and fewer men go to prostitutes - the fear of AIDS is spreading. Cocaine is the new big revenue stream. The fights in the neighborhood are getting harder:weapons instead of fists. It takes someone without scruples, someone like Pinzner.
The assassinations
Pinzner kills with a headshot. He received several tens of thousands of marks for his first job:the ex-brothel owner and dealer Yehuda Arzi owes money for cocaine and is a blackmailer - that's why he has to die.
Shortly afterwards the next murder:Pinzner ambushed the brothel partner Peter Pfeilmaier because Pinzner's client, the Kiez giant Peter N., wanted to take over his shares.
The third victim, Dietmar Traub, has also become a nuisance to Peter N. He thinks his partner takes too much coke. Peter N. is the client again for the fourth murder:Pinzner should kill Waldemar Dammer because he publicly humiliated the neighborhood boss. Pinzner and an accomplice shoot the brothel operator and one of his employees at the same time.
An Arminius caliber 38 special - that's Pinzner's revolver. He already worried about him in prison.
The weapon has a special feature:it stabilizes the projectiles with a rare "ten turns right twist" - and thus marks them with fine indentations. This helps the investigators on the track, because they keep finding such projectiles at the crime scenes. In May 1985, the public prosecutor's office and the police set up Special Commission 855.
The work of the Soko
The investigating prosecutor in the Soko is Wolfgang Bistry.
His focus is on fighting organized crime in Hamburg. His colleagues describe him as "hands on", but also as "risk-taking". He is fully committed to finding the neighborhood killer. At the beginning of 1986, Bistry and his team made their breakthrough:a milieu insider unpacked. Finally there is enough information to arrest Pinzner.
On April 15, 1986, a police task force used a trick to get Pinzner out of his apartment at Steilshooper Straße 77.
He comes straight out of the bathroom with wet, disheveled hair and is naked except for his stockings. Pinzner looks surprised. The police also found the murder weapon in the apartment. Shortly after the arrest, it becomes clear:Pinzner is ready to betray those behind the contract killings.
The investigators want to know how many more murders Pinzner committed.
Pinzner keeps delaying the officials. In the prison on remand, he manages to win his lawyer over to him.
From her he can be supplied with cocaine and heroin. She also smuggles letters back and forth between Werner Pinzner and his wife Jutta. The killer knows:He is literally finished. The Kiez greats would kill him if he were ever released. He doesn't want to go to jail himself. During regular visits, Pinzner and his lawyer plan his last great deed.
The Helpers
The Pinzner mandate is a big catch for the lawyer, whose name can no longer be mentioned publicly. It plays in the top league of Hamburg lawyers.
But reputation and money are not everything:She, who herself has serious problems with a mentally ill husband, allows herself to be drawn into the Pinzners' complicated marriage. She apparently identifies with Jutta Pinzner, who seems completely helpless without her Werner. With the drug smuggling for Pinzner, the lawyer becomes open to blackmail. In the end, she allows herself to be influenced to such an extent that she even procures the murder weapon.
With the help of the lawyer, Jutta Pinzner practices how to smuggle the revolver. They wrap the Smith &Wesson in a tea towel and put it in Jutta Pinzner's panties - as recreated here by the police.
She wears a wide skirt over it. The Pinzners and the lawyer plan for Jutta to go to the toilet and put the revolver in her handbag. This allows Werner Pinzner to get to the gun quickly in the interrogation room.
Jutta Pinzner would do anything for Werner Pinzner. She, who once worked in a bank, is employed and highly dependent on her husband.
In her letters, she addresses him by his nickname "Mucki" or "mein Geilus". She doesn't always seem to understand Pinzner's plans. For example, she writes:"Don't be angry with me, I don't see through it. My head and my nonexistent intelligence - I don't understand it." But she is sure she wants to die with him. "Mucki, I wish so much that we could hold each other in our arms and take off very gently, each feeling the love of the other," she wrote to Werner Pinzner shortly before the act.
A wife who willingly not only follows him into death, but even precedes him. A lawyer whose control of law and morality has gone completely haywire in her entanglement. Two women who made one thing possible for him:With murder and suicide, Werner Pinzner made a "big exit" on July 29, 1986.
Pinzner had wished for this "big departure". The deadly shots in the police headquarters trigger horror in Hamburg and nationwide. How could that happen? Who bears the consequences?
The consequences
The bloody deed is a scandal for Hamburg politics and administration. The security precautions in police buildings and prisons are under massive criticism. The investigators are accused of accommodating Pinzner too far.
The senators for interior and justice, both SPD, are already ailing - now Rolf Lange (on the left) and Eva Leithäuser (middle) have to resign. The ruling SPD lost in the 1986 elections - even though they were still the clear favorite before Pinzner's actions.
Times are also changing in Hamburg's Kiez.
Pinzner's lawyer has to answer in court - here with her own defense lawyer.
She is charged with being an accessory to murder and sentenced to six and a half years in prison. She is temporarily no longer allowed to work as a lawyer. Pinzner's client Peter N. is also sentenced - to life imprisonment. However, he was released from prison in 2000.
The room in which Werner Pinzner staged his departure almost 35 years ago no longer exists today. The high-rise has been renovated and modernized, and the police have long since moved. Cars rush through the intersection at Berliner Tor. Hardly any of the passers-by who walk past the building complex know what happened here on July 29, 1986.
Wolfgang Bistry's colleagues and friends keep the memories alive. For them, the events of July 29, 1986 and the murdered prosecutor remain unforgotten.
This documentation was kindly supported by Police Museum Hamburg , the Hamburg Public Prosecutor's Office , the Hamburg State Archive and the restaurant "Zum Silbersack" in Hamburg-St. Pauli.